The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    That Giant Sucking Sound Is Making It Hard To Think

    By Red Planet on Sun, 07/10/2011 - 9:13pm |

     

    I guess the following is just about all one needs to know about the status of the U. S. working class in 2011. 

    Today, the New York Times is reporting that U. S. manufacturing is expanding in maquiladoras along the Mexican border, despite increasing drug violence. Meanwhile, job growth is almost invisible here at home. 18,000 net jobs added last month.

    According to Wikipedia, "The fully loaded wage rate for a new unskilled laborer working in a maquiladora is $2.30 an hour, taking into consideration all of the cash and non cash fringe benefits." That includes the corporation's contribution to Mexico's socialized health care system, severance pay, paid holidays, mandatory bonuses and child care. If you were a capitalist plutocrat, where would you add new manufacturing jobs?

    I visited the maquiladora near Tucson several years ago, and toured a plant that manufactured wiring harnesses for Chrysler automobiles. The plant was clean, the workers were eager and intelligent (even if they did earn only "unskilled" wages), the workflow was smooth and the wiring harnesses were first class. There was a line of job applicants standing outside the door.

    Maquiladoras are the invention of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Do you remember the crazy third-party short guy with big ears who ran for President in 1992? The fellow who said "that giant sucking sound you hear is American jobs going south," once NAFTA was approved?

    Ross Perot. I didn't vote for him, did you? He didn't seem serious to me. Besides, the Democrat was from my home state of Arkansas. What was I to do? 

    Now, that sucking sound is deafening, and boy, do I wish Ross Perot were on the ticket in 2012. 

    Here is a video of Perot, sandwiched between two very serious politicians, George H. W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton. Take a look, and listen: 

     

     

    Plutocrats in both parties have been in charge here for far too long. What are we going to do about it?

     

    Comments

    Stupid Americans have allowed our country to be ruined.

    Our forefathers knew "we had a republic if we could keep it"

    We have become enslaved, 

    Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries, knew and warned us

    http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/celebrating-independence-seeking-regain-it-10935

     


    by Resistance on Sun, 07/10/2011 - 11:48pm

    Thanks for the link to David Coates, Resistance, this quote in particular: 

    “At the very least, a permanently successful regeneration of prosperity at home will require three fundamental changes. It will require a different global role for the United States (effectively, an incremental retreat from empire), an extensive reindustrialization of America’s industrial core, and a complete reversal of the drift towards social inequality and ethnic separation characteristic of the post-Reagan years.”

    Those who care about things like this must think about how to get from where we are to where we need to be. The conversation often comes down to talk about the next election, but one has to wonder about the efficacy of elections. It seems the only choice we have in elections is between relatively sane plutocrats and relatively insane plutocrats.

    Maybe the problem is too entrenched for elections to be the best solution. 

    We have a republic, as you note, but it has been gamed from the top. How can voters regain control? 


    by Red Planet on Mon, 07/11/2011 - 10:36am

    I think Cantor or the Pauls would say:

    See, that is how business works and how it should work.

    See, if we had no minimum wage here, everybody could have a job!

    Meanwhile we just keep subsidizing these corporate bastards with tax breaks!

     


    by Richard Day on Mon, 07/11/2011 - 2:45pm

    Yeah, we keep doing the same thing and pretending to expect different results.

    So how do we break the cycle, Richard? We keep angling to make sure Democrats win the next big election, hoping against hope that this time it really will make a difference. But that doesn't seem to make a significant difference.

    I'm beginning to think elections are distractions, gaudy spectacles to focus our hope upon, like Christmas trees and Easter sunrise services. We start with an expectation of a better result, then experience gradual dissapointment, and wind up fighting among ourselves until the prospect of the next election once again concentrates our minds.

    Maybe elections are incidental to the hard work of changing people's minds.


    by Red Planet on Mon, 07/11/2011 - 3:17pm

    That is the exact message I got from Carlin.

    See my blog at Paradigm:

     

    http://onceuponaparadigm.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/new-york-times-nothingness/#comments

    But in that blog I underlined the fact that I simply cannot give up all hope.

    I will give one defense of the events following the election of Obama.

    When we did have 60 votes in the GD Senate, Teddy and Byrd were spending most of their times in the hospital.

    I recall one vote where they had to bring in Byrd on a goddamn gurney!

    My hero, my Angel, my Savior Grandma Pelosi had managed to pass over 450 bills that just languished in the Senate until they evaporated into the mists.

    And, we had three or four Blue Dogs who sometimes came through and sometimes did not!

    Still, the bills passed--including the health care legislation--will be around for decades.

    And I think that text books decades from now (except those published in Texas) will have good things to say about those laws.

    the end.

    hahahahah


    by Richard Day on Mon, 07/11/2011 - 4:09pm

    I know it isn't all bad, Richard. It just doesn't rise to the challenge. Future historians may be so busy writing about the precipitous decline of the USA, and the lack of rational leadership that fostered it, to devote much space to health care legislation. 

    Pelosi in the House is another matter. If only there had been one in the Senate, and another in the White House.


    by Red Planet on Tue, 07/12/2011 - 11:13am

    I was pissed at Bush, so I voted for Perot, and we got Clinton. At the time, I was still a repub, so the idea that my protest vote allowed a dem into the Presidency is what formed my current day opinion that a third party vote is no different than pulling the lever for your REAL opposition.

    Having said that, I still wonder how things would have panned out if Perot had won and NAFTA never passed. I remember thinking at the time it made no financial sense at all to make it so easy for companies to send jobs out of America. Obviously, they will do whatever they can to make the most money, and that is what has happened.

    As I see it, the only way we will EVER get those jobs back is if we either bribe or punish companies into it. They will do whatever makes them the most money. Period.


    by stillidealistic on Mon, 07/11/2011 - 4:21pm

    I think you're right about the third party vote problem. Many of my friends voted for Nader and we got Bush the Second. 

    That's part of the reason why I think our perennial focus on the next election is a distraction.

    The next election won't solve the problem. We must change people's minds.

    Conservatives have beat us at that job. What are we going to do about it?


    by Red Planet on Tue, 07/12/2011 - 11:17am

    When the next generation asks, why didn't YOU  revolt, against the corrupt two party machine; you had to have seen enough evidence, the corruption was too deeply entrenched.

    I don't think the next generation is going to look upon our willingness to suffer, as some kind of virtue.

    Voting for the lesser of the two evils, is nothing more than settle for, no courage in that move

    Try to convince the next generation, who still lives under the corrupt system, we allowed to flourish "We hoped things would get better and rather than vote for the better; because we thought the corrupt two party system would get a conscience and do the right thing"  

    Our forefathers had a deadly revolution to throw off the corrupt government....... we only had to vote against the corrupt two party system?

    But we were afraid, we were too smart by half, we thought we could infiltrate and take control, we wouldn't need to take too drastic of action, we didn't need to rock the boat and vote for a third party candidate. The corrupt two party system would come to see the light.    

    "What part did you play grandpa/ma, did you vote for a candidate from the corrupt two party system, or did you revolt against the MSM, and the party hacks; voting instead in protest; in revolt? 


    by Resistance on Tue, 07/12/2011 - 5:58pm